{"id":301286,"date":"2015-05-05T00:47:16","date_gmt":"2015-05-05T00:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2015\/05\/05\/why-this-book-should-win-granma-nineteen-and-the-soviets-secret-by-btba-judge-monica-carter\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:39:21","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:39:21","slug":"why-this-book-should-win-granma-nineteen-and-the-soviets-secret-by-btba-judge-monica-carter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2015\/05\/05\/why-this-book-should-win-granma-nineteen-and-the-soviets-secret-by-btba-judge-monica-carter\/","title":{"rendered":"Why This Book Should Win – Granma Nineteen and the Soviet's Secret by BTBA Judge Monica Carter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monica Carter is a writer whose fiction has appeared in <\/i>Writers Tribe Review<\/a>, The Rattling Wall<\/a>, Black Clock<\/a>, and is a freelance critic<\/i>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Granma Nineteen and the Soviet\u2019s Secret<\/i><\/a> \u2013 Ondjaki, Translated from the Portuguese by Stephen Hennighan, Angola
\nBiblioasis<\/strong><\/p>\n

At thirty-six years old, Ondjaki is one of the most prominent figures in Angola with a stream of diverse works to behind him to solidify his status as a mainstay African writer. Not to mention his list of awards: winner of the 2013 Jose Saramago Prize, an Africa39\/Unesco City of Literature 2014 African Writer Under 40, a Guardian Top Five African Writer 2012, and winner of the Grinzane Prize for Best Young Writer 2010. His novel is the little novel that could. It came up slow on the judges, but it won’t leave. It\u2019s a tough sell amongst the Cort\u00e1zar, the ubiquitous Ferrante, the brilliance of the Hrabals, the seriousness of the Echenoz, or the linguistic leaps and narrative complexity of Can Xue. Admittedly, I am reluctant to get excited about a coming-of-age novel. Perhaps I am too old with too much cynicism. But that is what is beautiful about this novel \u2013 despite the historical setting of the civil war that lasted decades which would cause any country\u2019s citizens to be cynical, especially their artists, Granma Nineteen and the Soviet\u2019s Secret<\/em> is light, almost effervescent, a testament to the true nature of resilience and hope.<\/p>\n

Why should it win?<\/p>\n

1. Rarely does a novel make me laugh out loud and I often question the mental state of reviewers who say \u201cthis book kept me laughing out loud,\u201d but these few lines got me. <\/p>\n

We ran forward, then went in stealthily along the side of the veranda so that Granma wouldn\u2019t call us. The yard was dark. The parrot His Name shouted out to expose us: \u201cDown with American imperialism.\u201d We made an effort not to laugh: the words came from a television commercial that hadn\u2019t run in a long time. Just Parrot finished off: \u201cHey, Reagan, hands off Angola.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nHumor that is political, intelligent and done believably between two parrots is sometimes better than all the gravity of a three hundred page novel when it makes you want to tell other people how funny it is.<\/p>\n

2. The originality of Granma Nineteen and the Soviet\u2019s Secret<\/i> is present in his characters, in his scenes and in the overall narrative. It\u2019s fun. It\u2019s fun book to read but not in a \u201cguilty read\u201d type of way, but in a stylized, well-crafted literary way. The unnamed narrator\u2019s cast of characters is unique and refreshing. Residing on Bishop\u2019s Beach in Luanda, there\u2019s Granmas, Soviets or \u201cblue ants\u201d, Comrade Gas Jockey whose gas pump is just water, Comrade Gudafterov because of the way he says \u2018good afternoon\u2019, and Pi. The way the narrator explains how a friend arrives at a particular is always entertaining:<\/p>\n

That was how he got his name, Sea Foam, there on the shoreline of Bishop\u2019s Beach, where there was a huge blotch of white foam deposited by the breaking waves to ensure that the water merely lapped against the sand. Only if you walked far out did you lose your footing. There the foam disappeared, but closer in, where we also liked to pick up pretty seashells, it was just clean white foam, completely white as you looked to the right and the left, with Sea Foam\u2019s body making a dark stain in the whiteness.<\/p>\n

\u201cOye, ni\u00f1os, es el cabello del mar\u2026<\/i> The hair of the sea, do you understand? I mean, hahaha\u2026\u201d He went under for a second, dipped all of his hair in the foam awash with sand and shattered seashells, came up almost breathless and then puffed a like a little whale. \u201cI mean\u2026I\u2019m just a louse in the white hair of the sea.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n3. With a text this full of language \u2013 Spanish, bits of Russian, made up words \u2013 one can only imagine the level of Stephen Hennighan\u2019s creativity to properly convey all of Ondjaki\u2019s playfulness, nostalgia, and wistfulness without becoming mawkish, too flippant or irreverent. I don\u2019t know how much, if any, Ondjaki and Hennighan collaborated, but it seems as if Hennighan recreates the energy of Ondjaki\u2019s prose well. Hennighan also translated Ondjaki\u2019s previous work, Good Morning Comrades<\/i><\/a>, which I\u2019m sure added to his finesse with his style. In the back, he also included an index of cultural references which I like and I think adds to understanding some of Omdjaki\u2019s humor regarding the convoluted political history of Angola.<\/p>\n

4. The voice is so winsome. We don\u2019t know the narrator\u2019s name, but his voice just captivates with its loss of innocence and his love for his friends and his Granma. Yet, it never becomes syrupy or sickening. It is simply poignant:<\/p>\n

And I stood still.
\nIt wasn\u2019t only the fingers or the toes, the legs or the head and the eyes, that liked to look one way then the other. It was the stillness itself. Within me. The voice that speaks within me had nothing to say, or else it wanted to practice silence just like that.<\/p>\n

Still from not thinking.<\/p>\n

To feel the evening? To await a signal from the wind, a whistle like a segregated conversation taking account of the fact that the birds cried in a far-away and I could hear them? Wanting to hear mysterious sentences from Granma Catarina? Contemplating the things of Bishop\u2019s Beach that I thought I alone saw?<\/p>\n

Inventing minutes that were mine within the minutes of time?<\/p>\n

Growing up with a heart and body that were fleeing from childhood? \u201cIs someone running behind the child?\u201d Granma Nineteen was in the habit of asking. Was time pursuing me with a body to frighten me? I felt the whole world there in the small square of Bishop\u2019s Beach.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Granma Nineteen and the Soviet\u2019s Secret<\/i> is one of those rare charming novels full of spirit, humor and the craziness of politics and power\u2019s effect on its victims. It\u2019s not often that a gem like this can be delivered through the voice of a young boy in such a whimsical way. The styles of Ondjaki and Hennighan are simpatico and deserve the Best Translated Book Award<\/a> for this redemptive and enchanting work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monica Carter is a writer whose fiction has appeared in Writers Tribe Review, The Rattling Wall, Black Clock, and is a freelance critic. Granma Nineteen and the Soviet\u2019s Secret \u2013 Ondjaki, Translated from the Portuguese by Stephen Hennighan, Angola Biblioasis At thirty-six years old, Ondjaki is one of the most prominent figures in Angola with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[60346,3276,14406,12936,58996,3286,1646,60836],"class_list":["post-301286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-btba2015-fiction-longlist","tag-angola","tag-biblioasis","tag-monica-carter","tag-ondjaki","tag-portuguese","tag-review","tag-stephen-hennighan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316726,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301286\/revisions\/316726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}